Multiple Sclerosis and Other Autoimmune Diseases

Please note that this section contains my personal notes from my readings on this topic.

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“Even though there is widespread medical and scientific interest in this disease, most authorities claim to know very little about causes or cures. Major multiple sclerosis Internet Web sites all claim that the disease is an enigma. They generally list genetics, viruses and environmental factors as possibly playing roles in the development of this disease but pay almost no need to a possible role for diet. This is peculiar considering the wealth of intriguing information on the effects of food that is available from reputable research reports. Once again cow’s milk appears to play an important role.”

“The initial research showing an effect of diet on MS goes back more than half a century to the research of Dr. Roy Swank… Dr. Swank became interested in the dietary connection when he learned that MS appeared to be more common in the northern climates. There is a huge difference in MS prevalence as one moves away from the equator (The consumption of animal-based foods, especially cow’s milk, also increases with distance from the equator. In fact, in one of the more extensive studies, cow’s milk was found to be as good of a predictor of MS as latitude (i.e., sunshine). (p199)): MS is over 100 times more prevalent in the far north than at the equator, and seven times more prevalent in south Australia (closer to the South Pole) than in north Australia. This distribution is very similar to the distribution of other autoimmune diseases, including Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis….

Dr. Swank conducted his best-known trial on 144 MS patients from the Montreal Neurological Institute. He kept records on these patients for the next thirty-four years. He advised his patients to consume a diet low in saturated fat, most of whom did, but many of whom did not… As the study continued, Dr. Swank found that progression of disease was greatly reduced by the low-saturated fat diet, which worked even for people with initially advanced conditions. He summarized his work in 1990, concluding that for the sub-group of patients who began the low-saturated fat diet during the earlier stages of their disease, “about 95%…remained only mildly disabled for approximately thirty years.” Only 5% of these patients died. In contrast, 80% of the patients with early-stage MS who consumed the “poor” diet (higher saturated fat) died of MS.”

“Milk, which is designed by nature for the rapidly growing cow, has about half its calories supplied from fat. Besides the link between high-saturated-fat foods (dairy fat) and cancer, there is a body of scientific literature linking the consumption of cow’s milk to many other diseases. If we expect our children to resist many common illnesses, they simply must consume less milk, cheese, and butter. Dairy foods should be consumed in a limited quantity or not at all.”

This work is remarkable… if this were a study testing a potential drug, these findings would make any pharmaceutical manufacturer jingle the coins in his or her pocket. Swank’s first results were published more than a half century ago, then again and again and again for the next forty years.

More recently, additional studies have confirmed and extended Swank’s observations and gradually have begun to place more emphasis on cow’s milk. These new studies show that consuming cow’s milk is strongly linked to MS both when comparing different countries and when comparing states within the U.S.… The consumption of meat high in saturated fat, like milk, was also associated with MS in these multi-country studies, while the consumption of fish, containing more omega-3 fat, was associated with low rates of disease.”

… With regard to genes, … This tells us that this disease is more strongly related to environmental factors than it is to genes… Genetic predisposition may make a difference as to who gets MS, but even at best, genes can only account for about one-fourth of the total disease risk.

Although MS and Type 1 diabetes share some of the same unanswered questions on the exact roles of viruses and genes and the immune system, they also share the same alarming evidence regarding diet. For both diseases, a “Western” diet is strongly associated with disease incidence. Despite the efforts of those who would rather dismiss or mire these observational studies in controversy, they paint a consistent picture. Intervention studies conducted on people already suffering from these diseases only reinforce the findings of the observational studies. Dr. Swank did brilliant work on MS, and you may recall from chapter seven that Dr. James Anderson successfully reduced the medication requirements for Type 1 diabetics using diet alone. It’s important to note that both of these doctors used a diet that was significantly more moderate than a total whole foods, plant-based diet. I wonder what would happen to these autoimmune patients if the ideal diet were followed. I would bet on even greater success.

Knowing the strength of the evidence against animal foods, cow’s milk in particular, for both MS and Type 1 diabetes, and knowing how much in common all of the autoimmune diseases have, it is reasonable to begin thinking about food and its relationship to a much broader group of autoimmune diseases. [My emphasis] Obviously caution is called for; more research is needed to make conclusive statements about cross-autoimmune disease similarities. But the evidence we have now is already striking.

Today almost no indication of the dietary connection to these diseases has reached public awareness. The Web site of the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation, for example, reads, “There is no credible evidence that MS is due to poor diet or dietary deficiencies.”

Professional societies, doctors and government agencies need to stand up and do their duty, so that children being born today do not face tragedies that otherwise could be prevented.”